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Mark your calendars: the 2017 Association for Mormon Letters Conference will take place on April 21 and 22.

The conference will open in Provo with a keynote address at Writ & Vision from writer Phyllis Barber, the recipient of the 2016 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for outstanding achievement in Mormon Letters. The conference will then reconvene the next morning at Utah Valley University for a day of scholarly presentations, panel discussions, and literary readings. The winners of the AML Awards will also be announced at a special ceremony at 12:45 pm MST. Among those honored will be two lifetime achievement awards. Orson Scott Card will be presented with the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters, and Susan Elizabeth Howe will be presented with the Association for Mormon Letters Lifetime Achievement Award.

The conference and awards ceremony are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

2017

Association for Mormon Letters Conference

April 21-22, 2017

Utah Valley University

Schedule

Friday 4/21

Writ & Vision-274 W Center St., Provo, UT

7:00-8:00 PM

Keynote:

Phyllis Barber, “Reconciling Art with History”

Saturday 4/22

Utah Valley University-Orem, UT

9:30-10:00

AM

Registration

Room: CB 101A (Classroom Building)

10:00-11:15

AM

Panel Discussion:

“Mormon Historical Drama”

Tom Rogers

Melissa Larson

Margaret Young

Eric Samuelson

Moderator: James Goldberg

Room: CB 113

Sarah Reed, “Postmemory and the Lost Generation: Midcentury Mormon Novels”

Bert Fuller, “Mormon Poetry in Review: Some Notes on the Last Five Years.”

Sheldon Lawrence, “Mormon Conversion Narratives and the Construction of Certainty”

Room: CB 114

Campus Map and Parking

On Saturday, the conference will be held in the Classroom Building on the northwest end of campus, right next to the Fulton Library on College Drive. On campus maps, the building is marked CB.

When you arrive, please register in room 101A. All sessions will take place either in room 113 or 114. These rooms are right inside the southwest entrance of the building, right next to parking lot L4.

Mormons have long made recording and preserving their history a priority. On the day Joseph Smith organized the Church of Christ in 1830, he revealed that “there shall be a record kept” in the new church. Almost a year later, John Whitmer became the first person tasked with “writ[ing] and keep[ing] a regular history” of the Mormon people. Since then, Mormons have sought to preserve not only their institutional history, but their cultural and personal histories as well.

Mormon creative writers have likewise sought to engage the Mormon past. Among the earliest works of Mormon fiction, poetry, and drama were texts that retold and memorialized the epic story of the Mormon pioneers and their efforts to establish a foothold in the Intermountain West. In subsequent years, Mormon writers have continued to show interest in their history, producing texts that explore the history of the Latter-day Saint experience across the globe.

These works, while grounded in the events of the past, often offer insight into the present as well, creating multi-layered texts that give insight not only into Mormon understandings of history and memory, but also into the historical moment of the text itself.

For the 2017 Association for Mormon Letters Conference, we invite proposals for papers, panels, and readings that explore the intersections of literature and history in Mormon letters. We will also consider proposals on other subjects that fall within the boundaries of Mormon Letters.

Send proposals to scotthales80@gmail.com by 1 February 2017. Proposals should be no more than 300 words and include the title of the presentation as well as audio-visual needs.

Jonathan Langford asked me to expand on my comments regarding the recent 2015 AML Mini-Conference held at Utah Valley University on March 28. My comments were in response to some questions that Joe Plicka posted on this blog as a follow-up survey to the conference. Here are the questions:

– What did you take away from this year’s conference?

– What were the main challenges in planning and running it?

– How many people were in attendance? What was the breakdown of regulars vs. newcomers?

– What worked that you would like to see repeated at next year’s conference?

– What would you like to add or build on for next year’s conference?

– Do you have any suggestions for panels/themes for next year’s conference?

– Maybe most importantly, were there snacks?

I can’t speak to all the questions, but I loved the conference! James and Nicole Goldberg did a great job pulling everything together. I also liked the informal atmosphere of this one, where it was a group of people, of whatever background, who just wanted to find out what’s going on in Mormon Lit or share what they know about the Mormon Lit scene. I realize that we can’t have these informal, “introductory,” sessions every time (and wouldn’t want it that way), but it would be nice to host them occasionally so that we can attempt to grow the audience.

At this year’s Association for Mormon Letters conference I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on teaching Mormon literature with Margaret Blair Young, Shelah Miner, and Boyd Petersen. Among the items we discussed at length was the challenge of finding an audience for Mormon literature—particularly among actual living, breathing Latter-day Saints. I don’t remember every point we raised during the discussion, but the idea that has remained with me is that we need to do a better job of moving culture.

Currently, Mormon culture—at least in the United States—is not a great incubator for readers of the kind of Mormon literature I usually write about (i.e. “literary” Mormon literature, “realistic” Mormon literature, “serious” Mormon literature, “fringe” Mormon literature, etc.). Generally, a few Mormons will read what Deseret and Cedar Fort publish, but far fewer will pick up something by Zarahemla and Signature Books. We can debate reasons for why this is the case, but I think it probably comes down to the fact that most Mormons a) don’t have access to these books and b) would probably be put off by their realistic (or surrealistic) portrayals of flawed Mormons anyway.

This is where the idea of “moving culture” comes in. For the Mormon literature audience to grow, we need to be able to move culture physically to the potential reader and move the culture (that is, change it) in a way that helps potential readers better contextualize and appreciate what they see on the page.

Obviously, both types of moving will take monumental effort and probably centuries of dedicated service. In the meantime, here are three things I think we can start doing today:

Be Open

Talk about Mormon literature online. Share your experiences with good works of Mormon literature. Link to free works of Mormon literature online. Don’t shy away from endorsing good Mormon literature because you worry that its content might offend your Mormon friends and family. Lend out your Mormon literature and even (gasp!) make some of it available for free online.

Change the Conversation

Too often, the first thing we talk about when we talk about art and media in the church is “questionable” content: bad words, sex scenes, decapitations, etc. Unfortunately, doing so often distracts from the weightier matters of these works—and establishes critical standards that can prove spiritually harmful if applied to fallible Church leaders, incidents in Church history, and people and situations in general. (If it is unfair to judge people by the cockroach rule, why should we judge media by that standard?) I think doing what we can to shift the conversation from content to context will help move culture to a place more open to varieties of Mormon literature. I also think it will make us a more charitable people.

Embrace the Radical Middle

Cultural movers should not expect change overnight. Indeed, if Mormon history has taught us anything, it is that Mormons take change sluggishly and do not wear extremism well. As we talk about and write Mormon literature, let’s eschew the usual extreme approaches and radically shoot for the center, inviting our extremist friends and neighbors to meet us in the middle. Besides, as several people pointed out during the conference, the Church at present seems interested in moving the culture away from past extremisms, yet it continues to move slowly on this interest because of the apparent reluctance of many members to move with it. Perhaps our current cultural moment needs a new Home Literature that works in tandem with those messages from the Church that encourage a more open-minded, thoughtful, and charitable membership.

Performance of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” composed by Darrell Brown, BYU Idaho With text based on the short story of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this is song cycle/musical drama for solo tenor voice and accompanied by a consort of piccolo/flute/bass flute, eb clarinet/bb clarinet/eb contralto clarinet, cello, and percussion (marimba, vibraphone, chimes, congas, and bass drum).

The AML conference of 2013 was a huge success. Awards for 2012 are posted below, with citations. All citations were written by the judges in the various categories.

I will be submitting grant proposals so that AML can continue in full force, and invite each commenter to tell why the efforts of this organization matter either to you individually or to the LDS Church institutionally. Note that one of our chief objectives in the future is to become more international.

We are excited for the upcoming AML conference. It’s looking like a stellar couple of days. Please spread the word. The conference begins on March 29th in the evening, and goes all day on March 30 (Saturday). It’s free and will be well worth your time. Schedule follows.

Call for Papers
Association for Mormon Letters
March 29-30, 2013
Utah Valley University

Theme: Depictions of Christ in LDS literature, film, and art: Does it matter how we portray Him?

From Arnold Friberg to Levi Peterson to Jack Harrell, we have seen Christ as a Nordic, finely muscled man; a cigarette-smoking cowboy; a rough-hewn stranger at a Megadeath concert. Some have found Peterson’s “Cowboy Jesus” to be blasphemous; others have suggested that Mormon depictions of Christ (even those borrowed from non-LDS artists but displayed in temples and visitors’ centers) indicate a conspicuously white Savior at the helm of a conspicuously white church.

We invite proposals for papers discussing LDS books, films, and art. Papers may focus on particular works or on trends. We would also be interested in hearing about depictions of Christ from multi-cultural perspectives, or on the influence of LDS art on international congregations.

Deadline for submissions is February 20, 2013. Please submit proposals to Margaret Blair Young at Margaret_Young@byu.edu

The conference will begin on the evening of Friday, March 29th and conclude on the 30th.

THEME FOR THE 2013 AML CONFERENCE (dates TBA): “How We Depict the Savior in Art, Film, and Literature: Does it Matter?”

My review of The Color of Christ follows to ignite some ideas and discussion. Consider Levi Petersen’s controversial “Cowboy Jesus,” or Jack Harrell’s Jesus who attends a Megadeath concert with a teen (from Harrell’s collection A Sense of Order). The possibilities are vast.

In 2010, I gave a talk at the AML Annual Conference about the advantages of having readers who are already steeped in a vibrant mythic system. In the presentation, I outlined four different ways I saw LDS writing using scriptural allusions creatively and effectively in their works to help their audiences wrestle for meaning.

Several months later, Jack Harrell contacted me and asked if I’d be willing to submit a copy of the paper to Irreantum. Continue Reading →

AML Facebook Feed

The Association for Mormon Letters will present two lifetime achievement awards at the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference Banquet on March 23, held at the BYU Skyroom Restaurant, 6:30-8:30 pm. Lavina Fielding Anderson will be presented with the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters, and Robert Kirby will be presented with the Association for Mormon Letters Lifetime Achievement Award. Both authors will be attending. There will also be one panel dedicated to each awardee as part of the MSH Conference, held in the afternoon of March 23, before the award ceremony. associationmormonletters.org/blog/2018/03/lifetime-achievement-awards-lavina-fielding-anderson-an...... See MoreSee Less

Kim Östman reviews Hans H Mattsson and Christina Andersson Hanke's memoir, “Sökte sanning – fann tvivel” (Sought Truth, Found Doubt). Mattsson is a former member of the Third Quorum of the Seventy, who has been public with his transition away from belief in Mormonism. "Latter-day Saint life and faith is portrayed with great skill throughout the book, and nobody is portrayed flippantly or vindictively. Despite comments that remind the reader of the book’s ultimate message, its tone is respectful throughout, and it is abundantly clear that the authors have a place in their hearts for their former faith and their experiences within it. Mr. Mattsson appears to have arrived at a healthy vantage point from which to evaluate his life journey, which is demonstrated especially in the epilogue, written in first-person style." associationmormonletters.org/blog/reviews/current-reviews/mattsson-and-hanke-sokte-sanning-fans-t...... See MoreSee Less

Segullah interviews Susan Howe. "In my student days, I was repeatedly warned against didactic poetry, poetry whose purpose is to convince the reader of something. I still believe that to be a good warning; a didactic purpose keeps a poem from being art and reduces it to a kind of propaganda. On the other hand, the patriarchal literary establishment has, during my generation and earlier, prevented women from examining their own experience by calling women’s perspectives limited and partial, which of course they are, just as men’s perspectives are limited and partial. As a student I had to learn to read with a male perspective; now men also have to learn to read with a female perspective. I think this is altogether admirable and creates far greater opportunities for men and women to understand each other. I was also taught that if you know the end of your poem when you begin to write it, it’s already a dead poem, and I believe that’s also true. Poems are about exploring, examining, and learning where the poem wants to go, not deciding that beforehand. I hope that’s evident in my poems, particularly when I examine such subjects as Mother in Heaven." segullah.org/daily-special/interview-featured-writer-susan-elizabeth-howe/... See MoreSee Less